Why are we doing this? Because the M3 Max’s performance is wildly different from regular benchmark tests and real-world scenarios. For example, the Cinebench 2 benchmark for multi-core is 1644 and single-core is 139, which is a lot faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D that got 1467 and 105 points in multi-core and single-core respectively.
The M3 Max is even faster than the M1 Ultra which has more cores but the point is, these benchmarking software are optimised to use the full potential of the M3 chips while the real-world software will take a while to catch up to completely utilise the added benefits of these chips. It’s much, much faster than AMD and we’ll test it out with the Intel Core Ultra processors when they launch in the second week of December. But at the time of writing, the M3 Max outperforms the M1 Ultra and even the M2 Max chip in benchmarks but in real-world use, it’s not enough to throw your M2 Max out the window.
We all knew this but understanding the MacBook Pro 16in’s exceptional performance needs to be done. If you’re upgrading from Intel Macs, this thing is going to feel like ice skating on butter and if you’re going to run demanding software and do video editing, this is a phenomenal machine. The M3 MacBooks also support AV1 decode now.